2010-11-25

More likely, though, they thought there they might still be some hope for redemption for us here in Alabamberta, seeing as we have the pro-profit Prophet Danielle Smith and her Wild-Eyed Alliance Party to warn us about the similarities to North Korea in the way we do health care. You know, kinda give us a chance to nip things in the bud with a little privatization before we all climb into that hand-basket bound for Hell.

You know, that Sheila Weatherill, the “health care genius” Edmonton lost when Ron Liepert, then the minister of health, set about wreaking havoc on the health care system. The one who, according to the Edmonton Journal, “set out to turn the Edmonton health system into the Mayo Clinic of the north, a world centre of excellence in pediatrics, cardiology, neurology, women's health care and a variety of other fields.”

You know, that was back before they were comparing Edmonton’s emergency wards to comparable facilities in the Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea

Even for a backer of one of the worst unions in the country, this is a tad outrageous.

2010-11-22

I received this email from a hot blonde farmgirl friend of mine a couple of months back.

Slow down hotshot. It's a picture of cows.

But I also got this email:

Hello there,I looked your profile , I looking for girl aged from 27 to 55 and up more. Your profile liked to me and I have decided to write you.My dear, I want to tell you a little about me. My name is marina I am 27 years old, I am single lady and never married. I really would like to have friendshipwith you or something more :) What you think? If after my message you have interest then you can write to me here on my private e-mail: luzukova@rocketmail.com and if you will answer please tell me about yourself and in next mail I will tell you more about me too. I send to you my photo,hope you will like me I really shall hope for your answer soon.Thanks and have a good day,

2010-11-19

With the City of Edmonton experiencing the first snowfall of the year, I realized that of the five basic senses, three of them have begun to notice sensations associated with the season that have been long forgotten:

Sight: Have you ever been to Thailand or Hungary and been amazed at how they turn a 4-lane road into a de-facto 5-lane road because their cars are all so small? In fine Edmonton tradition, when winter comes we typically lose a lane of traffic. 105th Street north of 97th Avenue, or 170th Street south of 114th Avenue are good examples of this. Because of heavy snow and edged windrows, until the plows come out we're down a lane.

Sound: The first sense I got to experience associated with winter was that crunching noise that your boots make on snow. I bet you forgot that sound, didn't you? I did. In the words of Queen Celine, it's all coming back to me now.

Smell: Ah, that aroma of other people's exhaust hanging close to the earth and making it into your vehicle's cab. And because you need to keep hot air on your windshield, you can't just turn the blower off. I can't easily fit my truck inside my garage, so if I want a warm car to drive I have to endure this (being lower to the ground tends to make this worse).

Touch: What touch do I remember most with winter? As of yesterday, I have been re-acquainted with the feeling of ass landing on icy side streets.

What senses really bring winter alive to you? Were there tastes or sights that I missed? Drop a line in the comments.

Update, November 21 2010, 1:49pm:I found a sight. The post title has been adjusted accordingly, and you can find the entry under "sight" in the list above.

2010-11-16

While its almost a matter of shooting fish in a barrel highlighting liberal bias in the mainstream media, let alone just a giant juicy halibut like the Edmonton Journal, it still frustrates and infuriates me when you see nonsense like this.Edmonton Commons (to which your humble correspondent recently posted) is the Edmonton post-it-all-place on the CanWest Shaw Communications media website. Your hosts for this webzone are...far-left columnist Todd Babiak, far-left columnist Paula Simons, and far-left columnist David Staples. Good start, eh?

So lets look at the 15 blogs in their "Edmonton urban affairs discussion" section:

Okay. Notice anything funny about these 15 blogs? Let's have another peek at them:

That's 11 liberal blogs, three non-political general interest blogs, and a message board that has guest columns from David Climenhaga. Pretty eclectic mix they have on there, isn't it? On the entire page the best they can do is link to the CTF on the subject of the downtown arena.

It would really trouble them that much to risk having a Journal reader even briefly exposed to a centre-right perspective on matters not related to the Oilers? What, besides the obvious, are they scared of?

Subtle and hidden racism; the coach sitting the only non-white girl on the bench while every single other girl got to play, the job interview where you were the best candidate but didn’t get the job (you have a feeling…), the accusation of theft, the white people staring at your family while you eat, etc.

Apparently, no white people have ever not gotten a job where they "had a feeling" they were the best candidate. It's a good thing too, otherwise we would...hey, wait, nevermind, that does happen. Maybe a black person got "our" job! I think I just found a solid undeniable case of black privilege[putting it in bold was my idea... yeah, that's right, I'm creative! -ed]. You can't possibly pro or con this: if the minority claims he had a feeling he didn't get the job, then that's that: nothing anybody else can ever say otherwise!

Back in 2007, Canada was one of four countries that voted against UN’s Aboriginal Declaration. Reason stated: the broad wording “appeared to give native communities sweeping powers that could contravene existing law”. Heaven forgive giving some power back to a nation of people that were robbed of it through the European settlement of Canada.

Heaven forbid somebody can talk about the history of Canada without forwarding the patent untruth that Indians in Canada were "robbed" of their land and/or power. You'd almost think that, unique amoungst all the peoples of the world who's territory has been at some point fought or even contested for, where some sort of struggle for political power has taken place, two hundred and fifty years later Indians are still somehow completely incapable of getting over it. You'd almost think that, of course, but you would be wrong, because...well, let's face that there is no because. The most recent example that you can point to and challenge this assertion is Palestinians, and let's be honest: they've robbed quite enthusiastically from the Indian playbook. They have Judenhass as a constant feeder that Indians ("aboriginals" in the equally inaccurate vernacular) are without, but you can see much of the same trends rearing their ugly head from time to time.

Systemic racism and discrimination affects the Aboriginal community directly within the justice system; the proportion of Aboriginals in prison demonstrates this point.

No, it most definately does not "demonstrate this point". It doesn't even provide an evidential basis for further investigations. What, pray tell, is wrong with the current proportion of Indians in prison? And I don't mean by its numbers relative to its share of the population, as that's frankly an offensively simplistic measure by people who hope you haven't bothered to put any thought into it. Is the current proportion significantly higher than the proportion of Indian criminals? Indian defendants? What ratio is being looked at here? With the wrong ratio being highlighted, nothing at all has been demonstrated.

Now www.racismfreeedmonton.ca has removed reference to ‘white privilege’ and replaced it with ‘institutional’ and ‘systemic’ and ‘individual’ racism explanations; a very valid and strong explanation but a bit of a disservice to the Aboriginal community. The ‘white privilege’ in Canada that most strongly impacts their lives has been swept under the rug again.

Lina, in her comments to my earlier post, accused me of being "not prepared for a reasonable and mature discussion". Readers may remember that both on Twitter and in that post, I continually asked for an answer to the obvious question: where is my legal privileges granted to me for being white? If, I argued, no solid grounds of white privilege could be found, then the concept deserved to die. Not just be "swept under the rug": killed off. Thrown about like so much garbage.

The "Aboriginal community" already has treaty rights not granted to other blood relations of long-established white families who deserve just as much special credit for being the first in North America as they did. We see that from a 'justice' perspective in Caledonia how little privilege the peaceful white townspeople were afforded. Ditto in Oka (and those were French white people in Quebec, surely the group that would have been voted most likely to obtain some white privilege once and a while). As the previous link shows, in Alberta we see what white privilege gets you on a hunting license.

Find some nice juicy court cases, or some pieces of legislation, and then we can talk. Until then, its "white persecution", not "white privilege", which is plainly in full affect.

So, with almost everybody glad to see it go, it seems the matter is mostly closed. After all, the City of Edmonton doesn't give me any "white privilege": I'm taxed at the same rate as an asian, I'm forced to pay the exact same entry fee to Fort Edmonton Park as an Indian, and I have to drive at the same speed limit as a black (well, in theory). So it seems silly to be acknowledging a "white privilege" that is demonstrably shown not to exist. Examples of female privilege or Indian privilege, one may note, abound. So it seems to mark the death of this nonsense talk of "white privilege"

2010-11-13

Last night, four contestants for 100.3 The Bear's "Really Tough Contest" played in an event called "Cowboy Poker":

Normally when you think of poker the only thing you consider losing is your money! Cowboy poker requires a lot more than skill and money… it requires courage and NO fear!! Cowboy poker is a rodeo event played with four contestants, four chairs, a card table and a bull. The table and four chairs are set up in the middle of the rodeo arena. At the start of the game the announcer will outline the rules and then the contestants walk out to the table and sit in one of the four chairs. A bull is then released in to the ring to measure the courage of each cowboy. The rules are: the last cowboy sitting on his chair wins the poker hand. Some contests require skill; others require cajones. Cowboy Poker is one of the latter. In this high stake game the wild card really is wild!!

From all indications, things really weren't too hairy: I almost signed up for the event. I've been in a small pen with multiple bulls before, and they don't particularly frighten me. I've had to dodge them before, I can do it again.

What is ironic was that the "Cowboy Poker" event was one of the safer things you could do at the CFR last night...

The woman was conscious but suffering from back pain and numbness in her legs as she was taken by stretcher into an awaiting ambulance.

Three other people were treated on site and released.

If it wasn’t for the actions of pick-up man Gary Rempel, rodeo officials said it could have been a lot worse.

“He’s a hero,” Krista Burton of the Canadian Pro Rodeo Sports Medicine said of Rempel, who lassoed the bull by one horn as it was in full flight leaping into the crowd.

“If he hadn’t roped the bull, that bull could have stampeded into who knows how many people,” said Dave Shields Sr., the CFR’s assistant chute boss.

Interesting as coincidences go, exactly four people were injured (one severely). Four men willingly got into a pen with a bull and were mostly fine. Four people got primo seats at the CFR, and could have been killed.

2010-11-08

The 'world's most powerful man' faces a threat from New Delhi's infamous stray monkeys during his two day stay in the Capital starting November 7. Commandos, sharpshooters and monkey catchers will be pressed in to secure the sights on US president Barack Obama's itinerary from any untoward simiantransgression.

The Ridge area, close to the ITC Maurya, where the president will stay, as well as Humayun's Tomb, which he will visit on November 8, are infested with monkeys.

"This aspect of security will be discussed in an all-agency meeting on Monday," said Taj Hassan, joint commissioner of police (security).

"We will deploy commandos, snipers and even monkey catchers to ensure his safety," a police officer said.

Hopefully the commandos have a photo album handy. Or else this could become a messy international incident and fast.

2010-11-07

A good number of searches to Third Edge of the Sword are looking for the recipe to make the Ruby Club from theCorner Gas episode "Hero Sandwich". In my rundown of the episode, our #1 entry in the Corner Gas Countdown series, I mention how its a shame there is no real recipe. What we do have, however, is a variety of shots of the sandwich as various characters enjoy it. I am no food expert, but lets examine the shots:

Hank gives us our first good look at the Ruby Club. It seems to use a marble rye, fitting for Canada's Seinfeld. A slice of what is probably a hothouse tomato, and also a slice of yellow cheese (cheddar?) makes the first layer of the Ruby Club. The bottom layer only seems to be a slice of turkey, or maybe chicken. From this look, that seems to be the entire sandwich. No bacon or lettuce to be found.

Not much can be gleaned from this brief shot of the Ruby Club, though it does seem there's a Hollandaise-coloured sauce on the sandwich. This is probably what endears the town to the dish. It's also most likely where the "zesty" quality comes from that Hank appreciates.

Oscar gives another glimpse of the Ruby Club, though no new information can be found. It has a pickle on the side, which may come as standard. Don't tell Oscar though.

Mayor Fitzy, near the show's climax, is shown eating a Ruby Club (by this point, its the only menu item anybody who isn't Brent eats) that unlike Hank's and Oscars appears to be a Ruby Club Melt (though he may just have an extra slathering of the sauce we seemed to find earlier). Either he paid for the pickle, or Oscar is onto something: however, we can confirm no lettuce or bacon in this shot.

Finally we can see both halves of Fitzy's sandwich, and its clear this is it, that's all there is.

2010-11-03

Hey, remember H1N1? A year ago, it was all the rage. People were terrified of the disease, mass public immunizations were impacted by a yet-unexplained worldwide shortage, and after weeks of worry that conspiracy theories would keep people from getting the shot, Alberta's clinics were swamped.

Naturally, this was a field day for the opposition parties. As a sign of "the more things change", this year it was ER wait times. As the fall sitting of the legislature opens, it seems that there is no shortage of seniors that the Liberals or NDP can try to scare into voting against the Tories to save their own lives.

Which, of course, brings us back to last year's crisis. Another opposition politician scaring seniors that the Stelmach government was going to kill them. It wasn't ER wait times, which was surely a problem last year. It was the government reaction to flu clinic wait times that were an issue (as is normal for this, the issue was government inaction until action was taken, then the action itself was a horrific act).

Okay, you've had lots of chances to click the link now. Let's summarize. Seniors are not at very high-risk for contracting H1N1: in fact they are amoung the lowest. Of course, Swann could hardly say "hey easily frightened old people! Stelmach is right, you shouldn't be allowed to get H1N1 shots because to do so would risk the health and safety of women and children." It's true, of course. Which is why a Liberal would have so much trouble saying it.

So I said so. I pointed out the outright lie that had serious consequences for the health and safety of Albertans. Then for fun, I pointed out another lie by Swann that was more just for fun. Then, after some surmising that Swann had gotten his own shots, I proved that he promised he would be doing so earlier in the week. Much to the delight of Lib-NDP apologists, it transpired he didn't...which means that later on in the post I identified yet another lie by David Swann.

Here, let's read some highlights:

In Swann's blog today (yes, today, that will become significant later), he writes the typical tug-at-heartstrings stuff that Liberals are wont to say before they either bald-faced lie to your face and/or make a play for huge amounts of your money. To give away the ending here, Swann is about to do both.

In case you hadn't followed along so far, I'm noting that the elderly in fact have a reduced risk of H1N1 because before 1957 people's immune systems already contained antibodies to defend themselves against similar ailments.

So there you have it, good people of Alberta. Either Doctor David Swann, the man who wants to be premier in 2012, knows less about H1N1 than some blogger who vaguely recalled that the elderly were not at risk from newspaper stories I glanced over weeks ago... or else the Leader of the Alberta Liberal Party is lying to the people of Alberta in order to scare a significant voting bloc into believing that the Government of Alberta is taking actions that will harm them. I leave it up to you to solve this mystery.

I also notice that Swann wants us to forget that 10% of the population have gotten immunized and its expected no more than 60% will get immunized, "at this rate" the vaccine will be delivered by Christmas, not Valentine's Day. Meanwhile, the shortages of vaccine compared to original assurances is something that Swann doesn't like mentioning either. This guy sure doesn't seem to know a lot about the vaccination program he's promoting, does he?

This is the rationing argument. I've noted in Twitter that "Accessibility" in the Canada Health Act prohibits age or health-status discrimination in the provincial delivery of health services, so in reality Liberal Leader David Swann is proposing that Alberta violate the Canada Health Act. His contradictory hats are starting to be an issue now aren't they? It might be medically a good idea to violate The Act. On the other hand, as a Liberal MLA Swann hasn't exactly been keen on finding medically justifiable reasons to violate The Act now has he? If David Swann, M.D. wants to go on public record stating that he is in favour of any violation of the Canada Health Act which can provide health benefits for a subset of the population of Alberta I'm happy to stand toe to toe with him.

Spending more money again? Liberal solutions to healthcare crisis always seem to involve the province with the highest per-capita expenditures on public health somehow putting out money money. This time there's an added bonus to Swann: more publicly funded nurses mean more cash in the union coffers that keep his dilapidated party afloat. The extra angry bitches to protest in front of the leg grounds and/or star in deceptive political ads are really only an added bonus at this point.

Ahh, great stuff.

So, uh, you might see that the Alberta Liberal Party left almost as many blog comments as there are MLAs in their party. Amoung them, Ken Chapman went apeshit that I used ellipses to shorten one of the quotes, so I could fit it in a nice little info-box next to Swann's picture. They really jumped on that, which would have been impressive had I not already noted in the post that no matter which version (long or short) you read, Swann is a liar and/or an idiot. Chapman tried making strawman argument after strawman argument on Twitter. I got so tired of trying to fit responses into 140 characters (and also his tendency to accuse me of making up things that I already had linked to the proof of) that I just wrote another blogpost. It's got some highlights too, though less political and more just ripping into somebody who doesn't like his sacred cows being slaughtered by a master hunter:

I did link to proof: the TIME magazine article which discussed the actions being taken by CDC. If you don't think the Center for Disease Control is the world's best pandemic response team you can feel free to name another one. Hey, look out below! This blog takes comments!

(note, unlike the previous post I won't be linking to individual Twitter posts. Even when I did this I was accused of "making them up" so clearly I'm wearing down my "Ctrl", "C" and "V" keys unnecessarily)

I did post it all. I will post it all again:

I’ve heard from seniors with chronic disease, many with disabilities, who are not able to line up for hours due to their conditions. These are the very people most at risk and most likely to benefit from the vaccine!

Now to repost the same two links I used after the "misleading" and "edited" quote: seniors are the lowest risk groups (one lie) and least likely to benefit from the vaccine (two lies). If they aren't lies, then David Swann doesn't know anything about H1N1 and should stop waving his medical credentials around like a flag.

And at this point I think I'm pretty much done. In under half an hour the argument has gone from "you're making up all the various tweets you've linked to" and "once you add in a few extra words it magically makes Swann's lies into truths" into "just because he said he was going to get innoculated right away and said how important it was for people to do it doesn't mean there's any reason to believe he would" into "I didn't see you link to proof 26 times in a single blogpost and demand that you re-link things directly into my Twitter feed" into "why aren't you happy that Stelmach followed medical advice and David Swann pissed into the face of it for political points?" into "whoa, who said the CDC was a bigger expert than David Swann" into "well you didn't directly link to CDC only to a news story interviewing them and its old anyways" into "well you're not entitled to your own facts even though every fact you've already brought up has been blissfully ignored because they make David Swann look like a liar and an idiot".

A year later, with "ER wait times" the new emergency, what else has Swann been lying about? I neither know nor care to read up on the fine details of this "issue", so unlike H1N1 (where I had a specific reason to be concerned in favour of Swann: despite volunteering in a flu clinic my mother was not vaccinated -- even when interacting with potentially infected members of the public she was deemed not in a high risk group) I can't pick apart the public statements and promises in the legislature Swann has made. Though if past performance is any indication of future earnings, then David Swann is lying about ER wait times. And he's playing politics with your tax dollars and your health. Again.

The real interesting thing about this was, in 1997 when Web of Hate was published, Warren made a big deal about how at a couple of events the Reform Party had neo-Nazis in attendance at events (and in one case, working security). Naturally, that people just showed up at these events was unacceptable. In his view, Reform should have intensely scoured the names of people attending to weed out anybody who's views were too extreme for Kinsella. [the man's a liberal: his own views are intensely extreme vis a vis sodomite marriage or deregulating healthcare... -ed] Of course, what Kinsella the Liberal Liar didn't mention (and surely he knew) was that the neo-Nazis who got into the security gig were in fact doing so at the behest of CSIS, who's political masters includes the Prime Minister that Kinsella spends much of his journalistic career giving blowjobs to on the pages of newspapers. No matter how obscure these men were, however little they had to do with the actual Reform movement or the efforts of conservatives fighting liberals like Mulroney and Chretien, it didn't matter. Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon could separate Preston Manning from any of these men, but Kinsella would unfairly tar them all with the same brush. Be in the same room as a neo-Nazi (except, of course, for when Kinsella and his buddy Richard Warman hang out: that's a Nazi Kinsella is proud to call 'friend') and the gloves came off.

Of course, that was 1997. Now its 2010, and Kinsella has done a full 180. Apparently now its completely horrible that Andrew Lawton would keep this neo-nazi on the street. Had he been allowed to speak, and some new jackass was trying to pull Kinsella 1997 schtick, surely Warren would have leapt to Steyn's defense in the National Post.

2010-11-01

Way way back when Google Street View debuted in Edmonton, the Twitter meme of "you stay classy, #yeg" started up when it was found a blatent drug deal was caught in front of Milla's Pub on 101st Street.

Now here's that same section of sidewalk, with the people all removed by Google:

(click the image to view full sized)

Its taken at the same time of day, but the garbage bags next to the drug deal have also disappeared.

Remember the brownish van from the first picture? In this one, you can see the empty sidewalks...and the van is still there. It almost looks like Google straight out deleted these guys wholesale from the photos:

(click the image to view full sized)

So were they photoshopped out? Are there any images capturing this infamous moment for the ages?